IntroductionI’m an undercover operative working as a pizza delivery girl at our local Pizza Place, but they don’t know this. Yes, the pizza place is called The Pizza Place. Writer by day, pizza delivery girl by night. Even with you, my pizza loving friends, I cannot expose my mission until it is complete. They believe me some ditzy, flighty, type of overactive and energetic girl that just really, really loves her job, and makes inappropriate comments at times that result in a scolding.

No, seriously, the manager said to the assistant manager, “Did you scold her?” and then the assistant manager said to me, “Just to let you know, when and if you make inappropriate remarks, I have to scold you each and every time.”

I’d prefer to be reprimanded, chastised, or even constructively criticized, as scolding only makes cause for me to want to say even more inappropriate things, like, “I’m so sorry, Daddy. Would you like to put the soap in my mouth or should I do it myself?” Or worse, to pull my pants down and bend over in preparation for a spanking, as was how the scoldings took place in my childhood home, but of course, that would be even more inappropriate than the unfiltered words that sometimes blurt out of my mouth when they’re bubbling up inside and it’s impossible for me to keep them in.

Besides, it’s a cover, and I am prepared for many more scoldings to come, as I cannot let on that I am anything other than their new and beloved pizza delivery girl that brings her own unique appeal to the table (along with those inappropriate comments – Oh, if only they knew how many things I actually DO filter!)

But for you, my snot-nosed hot wing lovers, I will censor nothing. I will filter nothing. I will tell all!I can assure you that B O R I N G will not exist in the pages to follow, though hilarious, shocking, horrifying, terrifying, disgusting, exciting, and dramatic may.

These are the chronicles of a pizza delivery girl, but be warned. After reading through the pages of these pizza tales, you may never look at pizza places the same way, ever again. So if you are faint of heart, proper-like, sensitive, or would rather maintain your blissful innocence and remain oblivious, I advise against you reading any more than what you’ve already been exposed to.

Go back to pondering whether you want a pickup or delivery, and which toppings you would like on your pizza, and whether you want to justify the expense of getting wings this time. But do know that if you order delivery, I may be the one dancing around the dog poop in your yard, looking through your windows to make sure you’re home, knocking on your door or incessantly ringing your doorbell and you will never, ever know that it is I, undercover operative, author of the Pizza Girl Chronicles, endeavoring on a mission that I must protect with my life, and you very well could wind up in these pages, a victim to the writer’s pen, eternally etched into an unfiltered pizza tale by an anonymous pizza delivery girl, and there will be nothing you can do about it, because this pizza girl will know where you live, and she will return again and again, because to live without pizza is to live without breath, and pizza withdrawals are even worse than being kicked in the nuts.​I mean, of course, I wouldn’t know this personally, as I am a pizza delivery girl, but still, I’m pretty sure I made my point. Let the uncensored pizza tales begin. Hold onto your pants, or your – well, after my last comment, you’re probably holding onto your – Nevermind. You don’t really have to hold onto anything. It’s just an expression. So, just keep reading … or not. And think of me always when someone calls out, “Pizza Girl!”, then knocks on the door of your safe haven, carrying that night’s dinner. And tip her well, because that girl could be me, and you’d never even know it.

​That evening, I was ordered to join the rest for dinner, instead of the scraps of bread I’d been rationing the past few days. The room grew silent when I entered. I got my tray, found a seat as far away from everyone else, and ate like a starving guy, two-fisted. I didn’t even care to know what I was eating, nor did I allow myself to taste it.

Six grouped-guys moved their seats and stood towering over me.

“You’re blocking my light,” I said, with a mouthful of mush.

“You’re just a kid,” one said.

“Not any kid you’ve ever met before. Now move on or sit down.”

They sat, looking over me curiously.

“Where’d a little feminine-looking twig of a weasel like you learn how to fight like that?”

“Wait until I get a gun in my hand. Size is a weapon, the smallest are the deadliest. Remember that boys,” I said. Then stood up, dumped my tray, and ran toward the showers before anyone else could get there and realize I was missing some necessary parts.I walked myself to the interrogation room.

“Not tonight, Recruit. You get to sleep with the guys,” the Officer said, and I was led to the ‘dormitory’. Great, so much for getting any sleep. “Beds are first come, first serve. Better not find yourself having to sleep with a Bubba. Whoops, looks like it’s too late,” he said when I walked in. “Goodnight, newbie.”

“Oh, look, the little twerp finally gets to join us in slumber. You can sleep with me, sweetheart,” someone made kissing noises.

“I’m not a faggot,” I said.

“We’ll turn you into a squealing little girl,” another said, and they laughed.

“We’ll see who winds up being the pig squealing when you wake up with your parts shoved down your throat.”

“Oooohhh,” they sounded.

I sat at the table at the far end of the room, in a chair against the wall, in the dark. I laid my legs out on another chair.

“You gonna sleep there all night, chicken little?”

“No, I’m going to wait until you fall asleep.”

“You got a big attitude, short shit.”

“I also got a big dick. Wanna see it?”

And they laughed, but this time, they weren’t laughing at me.

I waited until the room fell quiet with steady breathing, snoring, and the occasional fart, then tiptoed toward the bathroom. I was just getting my pants down when I heard sounds, and hurriedly pulled them up a hundredth of a second before three of them entered, blocking the door.

Thinking fast, I elbowed the small mirror, and grabbed a piece of glass in my left hand. “Touch me, you die,” I said.

“Wooo, easy killer.”

I watched cautiously and defensively as he moved the tiles behind the door.

“I think you need this, chill out,” he handed me a flask. “Go on, take a drink, short stack.” I did. It burned harshly on the way down.

“I’ll relax when you move away from the door,” I said.

Three more entered, then another two. They took their seats cross-legged on the floor. I sat next to the door, while they lit rolled cigarettes and passed around the flask.

“You been hurt before, ain’t you?” The room got silent and I realized they were talking to me.

“What would make you say that?” I responded.

“The way you act, like you been hurt bad. You got this look about you, act like people do in prison, afraid to turn their back. I don’t know about the other guys, but I’m scared of going to sleep ‘round you. We all just joke around like men do, but you seem serious when you make your threats, like you done this before. This is brotherhood, man,” he said, slapping his chest. “Brotherhood,” then he slapped at my chest, and I was thankful for the bandages crushing my feminine secrets.

“That’s not the feeling I’ve gotten.”

“That’s initiation, man. Tradition.”

“So when does the hazing happen? Tradition,” I said dryly. Then took another swallow of the potent liquid.

“Is that why you been keeping away from us at night? You already got yours, at the chin-up bar. Why do you think the Officer just stood there and let us do it? We all went through it too, whether we did the 25 pull-ups or not. It’s a test.”

“My whole life has been a test,” I said harshly. “I’m sick of tests.”

“You’re certainly good at passing them. Knocked down six of us first day here. You earned our respect, don’t you get that? Proved yourself. We go to battle, we gotta know the guys we’re with can hold their own and have our back. A pussy could be our own death, and we get a lot of those. Little boys coming in here wanting a free college education, having no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into, until they crack. We can’t afford to have any little girls walking around here.”

I laughed, being the only one aware of how funny it was he should say that.

“All right boys, lights out, another long hard day tomorrow.”

We returned to the beds and I could hardly contain my laughter from bursting forth. I waited for it.

What writing a horror novel in January feels like: It was hardly 6pm, yet the sky was painted in black ink, an uncomfortable contrast from the lighting indoors. I navigated the tilted stairs, wondering for the hundredth time, "Would this be the day that these wooden, water-damaged basement stairs finally collapsed, plummeting my body toward the wet cement floor in the unlit workshop where monsters lurked in the darkness?" Alone in the house, I provided the cat a rare generosity - to come down into the dark basement with me.Throwing another load of laundry in the water-efficient washer that sounds like no other - a washer that squeaks, groans, whirs, and sounds like a fast-paced train rushing at the house when it's in the drain cycle, I considered humming to disrupt the silence that was unusually foreboding this night. I folded the three loads of clean clothes while trying not to play out the scenes of the horror novel I'm writing, which is as effective as not visualizing a pink elephant after telling yourself not to think of a pink elephant. Your mind cannot help itself, as it is a rebel -it has to think of the pink elephant, especially when told not to do so.An awful squeak kept coming from the darkened furnace and water-heater room. Can these clothes fold any faster? I reassured myself it was only the damper being moved by the wind outside. Bad things. Bad things happen to little girls in the dark. The walls are whispering. I whipped around toward the door I had my back facing, just to make sure there's no ghastly black spirit standing there. Nope, things were as they're supposed to be. There was no whispering in the walls other than the whispering in the walls of the horror novel I'm writing, "On the Other Side of the Wall." A perfectly creepy scene where suddenly I felt as though I'd somehow managed to jump into its pages.Against my will, my mind began singing the song in the book when the child fears the dark, fears the face in the window, fears the whispering behind the walls, "This little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine."Laundry's done. Finally, I can return to the well-lit safe haven of the upstairs. I struggled to carry the heavy basket, turned off the laundry room light, cloaked in darkness once again. "Charlie," I called my daughter's cat. "Come on, Charlie." I stared out into the expanse of darkness of the open downstairs. His eyes glowed fiercely, like a hidden predator in the night, patiently awaiting his prey. He refused to follow me.I knew what he was planning, because he's evil like that, but it still didn't stop me from shrieking when he came chasing after me up the stairs while I tried not dropping the laundry basket of clean clothes. The mudroom is the coldest room in the house. I could see my breath.There was whistling and shrieking and it wasn't coming from the possessed washer downstairs. It was coming from beyond the door, where suddenly fire alarms penetrated the night. It was the type of night where people lock their doors and stay engulfed in synthetic light for a false safety and security.I heard a crash. The night outside was so dark, I had to press my face to the cold glass window of my door to attempt to see anything. All the while my mind kept playing the scenes from my horror novel. Bad things. Bad things happen in the dark. You must run. You must hide. The darkness child whispered beyond the wall. Something came toward my face, fast, causing me to jump back away from the door.How many times have I told my daughter to close the storm door so that the wind doesn't whip it back and forth? But wait, something's different. Something's off. There's ... something ... a big shadow in my driveway. I practically got frost-bite on my nose, as I pressed my face so tight to the glass in order to decipher the shadow.The crash. It was my basketball hoop, having lost the match against the whipping wind, and toppled over into the driveway. I briefly considered picking it up, as it was covering the entire driveway and my daughter was expected home at any minute. All the while, the fire alarms were still going off.Hell No! I'm not going out there, I thought loudly, while my facial expression mimicked my thoughts with raised eyebrows and adult-like justification that won't, in a thousand years, admit to actually being afraid. Instead, it came down to a 'It's cold out there, and I don't feel like doing it right now.'Finally, back in the heated, lighted safety of my upstairs, I called my daughter's ride to give her a heads up about my driveway being blocked. When my daughter finally walked through the door, I gave her a giddy hug and told her how much I missed her. She will never know that I used her cat as a safety-base to attempt to keep my fears eased. Nor will she ever know how Mommy shrieked, how Mommy trembled, and how Mommy almost peed her pants in fright, because writing a horror novel in January is some scary shit.​

Beginning 09/20/15, you can go to https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2ED6KE98RR776, have access to the excerpt and nominate Otherland to be my next published book. If I win, everyone who nominated the book will receive a free digital copy from Kindle. Otherland is a full-length fantasy, metaphysical & visionary novel, dedicated to my Light soul, Grandpa Bargabos, a man with strong convictions of unconditional love and faith, whom died when I was in the midst of writing this book. It teaches and answers the dichotomy of human love & faithful duty, life & spirituality. Written for adults with PG-13 content that is great for young adults as well.

She just wants to escape from being hunted.Aliyah, the only human to travel the Otherland, the Lightness, the Darkness, the Nothingness, and the Forbidden. The Bylaws forbid any human that finds their way there from ever returning, but since childhood, she's been able to resist their restraints and roam freely. Hunted in Otherworld. Hunted in Otherland. No memories of her travels, but something keeps her going back. Now they're coming for her. It's the Light Knight's duty to recover her memories and recover her faith or all will be lost.

PROLOGUE

"Please. Please don't . . ." The words were drowned in gasping sobs. "Please don't leave me! Please stay. A little while longer, then I promise I'll let you go." She ran to him, tears streaming down her face. His heart broke. She was but a child, smaller than most. He wanted always to protect her. Appearances revealed that the world would swallow her whole. So petite, so innocent, so pure. It is not how she'd come. The beat of his heart picked up. He squeezed her tighter in recalled memory of how he'd found her. Seconds away from fallen. Now, as he lifted her chin and stared into her tear-glittering ocean eyes, he knew beyond a doubt she'd been cleansed, purified, wiped clean. As untainted as a child first born into the world. Oblivious. And this particular child had been born with the soul of an angel, a heart full of gold . . . and a mission.It is not the first time she'd been reborn, nor the fifth. The world was getting worse and they were simply outnumbered. Too many fell - too many fallen. The most difficult thing to endure was not giving up - nor giving in. She had to go back. They both did, "There, there. It's not so bad. It won't be long. A mere second in eternity." "But what if I lose my way? What if I can't find my way back? When will I see you? What if you forget?" she said, almost hysterically, her questions rapid-fire. He heard the low rumbling in the distance, growing louder, coming closer. The light was dimming, gradually it seemed with eyes open, but rapidly with a blink. He did not answer her as he did not have the answers. "We must go now. It's time," he urged, pulling on her fragile hand. "Now. We must go now!" he said more urgently, seeing beyond her, seeing what she could not. She crossed her arms and set her face stubbornly. "Not until you tell me your name."The ground shook beneath him. "Please, little one, we must go now!" She couldn't see the wrong, the changes around her. She'd been here too long. So good and pure was she in soul that she was completely oblivious to the crumbling of their world. "I won't move an inch until you tell me your name so I may find you again." And there she plunked down right on her behind while behind her everything was being cast into Nothingness. If the Nothingness reached them, they'd be lost. "I demand you get up and move, little one." "I will not lose you. I will not! Tell me your name?" And if her body was small and unremarkable in strength for their being none, her voice rose over falling mountains, shattering ground, and reverberated throughout the Nothingness. "You know we do not speak names, little one. Names will bring about the curse." "Blah the curse. I don't care. I will take any curse if it means I will find you again." "You know nothing! You are a child!" "I may be a child, but my power is my love and love conquers all. Even the power which is yours. I will die without my love, and if I cannot find you again, I will perish. Do you hear me? I will lose!" Tears pricked his lids. How could he have, moments ago, believed her weak and too pure to survive? All the battles he'd fought and won . . . "My power is duty. I will not defy our Father by telling you my name." "Love is more powerful than duty. Succumb to me!" "I will not! Duty is more powerful than love. I will not defy Him as you defy me. You'll be the ruin of both of us, but at least I'm being true to my duty," he said firmly, marking the sign of the cross over his heart. Her eyes luminescent suddenly, almost blinding. He shielded his face as she lifted her eyes to him. In that moment, she was not a little girl. She was all wisdom, all knowing. The pain he thought she oblivious too showed fierce and deep in the huge globe of her eyes. "And I'm being true to my heart," she whispered. Whereas he thought her so innocently unaware to the disappearance of their world, she turned to the Nothingness, her face that of an aged woman, beautiful and tragic. She sobbed deeply once, allowing her shoulders to fall with the burden of the knowing that she carried. Sadly, she knew what she had to do. "Little one?" "If my love cannot overpower your duty, nor your duty my love . . ." Then she lifted her brilliant face, a single tear glimmering like crystal on her cheek, and spread her arms. "In the name of love, my name is Aliyah Destiny Demonica!" And she jumped. "No!" he howled as he dove for her, but They had already snatched her away into Nothingness, giving them the power in the knowing of her name, as it echoed throughout infinite miles of the emptiness. Aliyah. He crouched on his knees, his torment great. He faced the light, the Darkness at his back. "Lord, forgive me. I have failed you." He cried. As quickly as he'd been humbled, he stood and nodded his head - the firm features of his face set in the knowing of his duty. He stared out into the beautiful gardens, the earth, the animals, and all that was divine and plentiful. The lighted path that would have brought them to their final destination. And he turned his back. His duty was to protect her. He knew that now. And so he stepped into the Nothingness, of the purest of black and the starkest of silence, and walked blindly away from the light, knowing and feeling deeply that he'd never return in the absence of her. As much as the world required his duty, so too did the world require her love. They'd never been meant to go against each other, rather, to unite harmoniously to create synchrony amidst the All and the Nothing. He had something she did not. He possessed the power of her name. She'd crossed the Forbidden, but only in that crossing did she set the path. Her name was Aliyah. Her power was love, and his duty. It is what kept them alive. One could perceive that she'd been consumed by the Nothingness, but it only takes one to disperse of none, just as one microscopic mass will demolish the empty. And now there were two.CHAPTER 1SIGNIFICANCE IN THE AWAREI’ve always wondered if perhaps I speak a different language, as though my dialect on the sound waves directed to another’s ears are somehow altered during their transport.So much the words I say go misunderstood.Or perhaps like the animal that can hear sounds and pitches our own ears cannot, my spoken voice cannot be heard but by a select few.So much the words I speak go unheard.I’ve always wondered if perhaps my frame is not solid, or rather my skin not opaque, most part of me translucent, invisible to those common eyes, as though there is a part of me ghost or spirit and another visible and solidly human.So much the good of me goes unnoticed.We all have a field that surrounds us, an aura of energy of sorts, and these fields are intuitive to the fields of others. I’ve always wondered if perhaps there are others dominating my space, an attraction of dark entities with faces and bodies pressed to my globe, trying to get in to blacken my white spirit.So much the good that surrounds me goes unfelt.Am I surrounded by mirrors that distort my features so that those things I express are deformed and disabled as those reactions typical to each expression are not provided to me in kind to what I display and depict.So much of my expressions are misinterpreted.These are the questions I have always asked of myself as I walk my path alone.Lydia kicked her feet against the bed, rhythmically flexing her calves to ease the restlessness. She ignored the tingly-crawlies she felt all over her body, and refused to change positions, no matter how much her body was telling her to. Tick-tock, tick-tock. The tick she didn’t mind so much. It was the tock that bothered her, to her a formidable sound that marked the passage of time; time that should have been spent sleeping. She measured her breathing to inhale at the tick and exhale at the tock.“Focus on the paralysis of your body, Lydia,” her sleep Doctor had told her. “Remember my voice, the gentle lulls up and down like the gentle tides of the ocean, pulling you further and further from the shore. Embrace the comfortable tingling starting at your toes, and as the tingling moves toward your calves, your toes become numb, and as the warm, fuzzy tingling moves toward your knees, your calves become numb, upward to your thighs and to the very tip of your fingers and the top of your head.”COO COO! COO COO! She nearly jumped out of her skin. 2 am. She’d been laying there for four hours. “No, Lydia, don’t get rid of your Cuckoo clock. If you do, you will keep opening your eyes to look at the time, and will come full into consciousness again. You will be further exacerbated with the anxiety of not knowing what time it is,” she mocked the specialist angrily as she got up to get a drink of water. “Drink water only, sip it slowly, half a glass so you won’t be interrupted with bathroom breaks in the middle of the night. No tea, no coffee, no soda, and no more alcohol! Self-medicating is only a temporary fix to your sleep problems, it doesn’t create restful sleep, which will only prolong and make-worse your sleep issues. WELL, AT LEAST IT ALLOWS ME TO FALL ASLEEP!” she yelled in frustration. She turned the TV on to low-volume, a Merlin episode on Netflix, against the specialist’s advice, and began the processes all over again. She counted Mississippi’s backwards from 10, forward to 9, back again, while imagining herself stepping further and further back into the darkness.‘Do not fear the dark. Darkness is your friend,’ she heard, perhaps from the TV. She kept strolling further back into the trenches of unconsciousness. As usual, ghastly images presented themselves in front of her and in her peripheral. Images that had previously frightened her and kept her constantly waking up. Images that she didn’t have to face when she’d been drinking in order to pass out. She saw dolls with crying eyes, angry, scary faces, bleeding porcelain masks. They can’t hurt me. Not real, she told herself. Keep walking. A purple pony with its neck broken. A ghost swinging from a beam, a rope around its neck. Her heart picked up in that old childhood fear that if a ghost knew you could see it, they’d follow you. Creak, creak, creak, it sounded. Keep walking. Eyes straight forward. Don’t look back!All of a sudden, the area opened up, and a vast array of colors permeated the darkest of darkness. Now enthralled, she kept moving forward, as it seemed only a few feet away. It was like looking out through a huge stone and glittering, blue emerald crown. There were 8 points, like the directions of a compass – North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, West, Northwest, all made of stone with little embedded blue emeralds, with the end of the point marked with a large blue emerald. The sun on the emerald tips provoked a whirlwind of colors across the immaculate sky that looked like a sunrise. Different from the earth’s sunrise, it was marked with darker shades of oranges, blues, pinks, and purples. The sun was a deep orange, and appeared to be captured in a huge glass globe.“Magnificent,” she breathed. Remember this when I’m awake so that I may draw it, Lydia sent back to her conscious mind. She kept walking forward, wanting to see more than just the sky. Suddenly an eyeball covered up the entire view. It was large with perfect white surrounding the beautiful green iris, and black outlining the bottom and top lids. It looked almost as though she was being looked at through a telescope, and she was looking through the telescope at the opposite end. It blinked. She stared at the eye for quite a long time, memorizing the green, a green she’d never quite seen before. Perfection. She wondered what the eye saw of her? Did the eye looking at her see her blue, bloodshot, sleep-deprived eye?Hello, she thought. Who are you?The eye abruptly left, momentarily shedding into her view what she’d previously been admiring. She felt peace, surrender even. Then swiftly there was darkness and a roaring growl, “Go back!” The sudden cutting off of light left her completely blind and disoriented. She didn’t want to go back. She didn’t want to go back to the dead eyes, the bleeding masks, the creaking, pendulum-swinging ghost. She didn’t want to hear the Cuckoo clock alert her to 3 am or 4 am. She was sleeping and she was going to stay sleeping, dammit. So she pushed forward toward where the beautiful land had been, the air growing heavy and thick, until there came a point where she felt she couldn’t breathe. Still, she pushed forward, her body growing heavier and laden until she was on her hands and knees, crawling. “You must go back!” A different voice, a child’s, full of alarm. “No,” she tried crying out, but without breath she was without voice. She felt like she was squeezing herself through a narrow tunnel that was getting narrower with each movement forward. Must . . . Not . . . Wake . . . Up. She moved her hands further, and the ground was gone. She somersaulted forward, willing herself not to scream and be frightened. Everyone knows that the fear of the catapulting off a cliff in one’s dreams always wakes one up before they hit the ground. I’m not going to die. That’ s just a myth, she told herself, then willed herself to open her eyes a tenth of a second before careening into something white and fluffy. Is this what my subconscious mind thinks of my new foam mattress? She laid there, feeling as though she was cocooned in a cloud, staring up at the brilliant sky, feeling the warm caress of the globed deep-orange sun, and she sighed happily. Blessed sleep, finally, and she closed her eyes. But then she felt a gentle jab to her side. “You’re not supposed to be here. How did you get in?” The child’s voice that had urged her to go back. She opened her eyes and this time saw a pair of those beautiful green eyes, connected to a flawless face that looked about 11 or 12 years old. She sat up, “You! I saw you looking at me! Tell me, boy, what is this place?”“You must leave now!” he said, pointing his finger at an impossibly small black tunnel that looked so off-putting in this beautiful world of colors. She laughed lightly, not remembering when she’d last felt this good. “Why would I go back to that place of nightmares? I want to sleep here. I have a very important meeting at work tomorrow that I can’t miss, so please, just let me rest for a time and I’ll be gone before you know it.”He stomped his foot, which on a cloud was as futile as stomping one’s foot into a pile of fluffy snow. “You don’t belong here. If They find out -.” Suddenly, the winds picked up in a fury, alerting her to open her eyes again. She saw black and white figures circling in the air, and plunging down toward them, which was creating the mild tornado-effect. Six black and six white surrounded them in a circle, not quite touching the ground, rather floating a few inches above it. They should have scared her, but in this land of beauty, they didn’t. Their figures were each uniquely different, as were their dark eyes that glittered as brilliantly as the blue emeralds. “Hello,” Lydia said, intent on not having her peaceful slumber disturbed. Her issues with insomnia weren’t just the inability to fall asleep, but the inability to stay asleep, and the constant waking would then result in the inability to wake while her desperate body demanded the needed sleep. “She’s alive?” a white figure with piercing indigo eyes said in surprise. “You! You let her in,” a black scrawny figure with a deep voice and beaming, dark yellow eyes pointed at the boy.“I – I swear I did not,” the boy’s voice pitched. “I was doing my rounds, as usual, and saw her headed in this direction, so I activated the switch. She shouldn’t have been able to get through, but she did.”“He’s lying! No living human can navigate here without direction and without being let in,” a stouter black figure with grey eyes said. “There is only one possible conclusion. We never should have trusted a human boy. He let her in, which by the Bylaws means imprisonment.”“Check the switch. It’s activated,” his voice whined. A tall white figure with dark pink eyes raised what could be attributed to a type of arm, stopping the black figures’ movements toward them. “Check the switch,” it commanded.“See, I told you I activated it. I didn’t do anything wrong. I did my job just as instructed. I even told her to go back.”“He could have activated the switch after he let her in.”“Human.”“Huh?” Lydia re-opened her dreaming eyes.“How did you get in here?”She yawned. “I just fell through into this dream wonderland. Best sleep I’ve had in a decade.”“She couldn’t have just fallen through without it being open.”“Yes, yes, I do agree that this requires an investigation and a consultation. In the meantime, we must follow the Bylaws,” the white-figure with the indigo eyes said. “Wait. I’ll go with you without resistance,” the boy said. “But let her return. You heard her. She thinks she’s in dream wonderland, all just a dream. She won’t remember anything.”“It’s a bit late for that, human, don’t you think? The pathway has now been inked into her subconscious, and she bypassed all the things meant to frighten her and turn her around. She will return, and next time, she may not be alone. Like you, boy, she can never go back. Human, you are to come with us. If you fight us, you will be restrained.”“You’re actually a quite adorable demon with your orange squinty eyes,” Lydia smiled, lazily picking herself up, feeling as though she weighed lighter than the air itself. Well, almost, less she be floating or flying like them. “My Doctor was so right. He said that once I start confronting my fears, instead of running from them, then the feeling of fear would dissipate and I’d stop waking myself up full of panic and adrenaline.” “Silence, human. I’d rather spend an eternity as I am than spend another minute in the idiotic human mind,” he/it mumbled. “Looks like the woman’s freedom movement hasn’t reached dreamland. You’re all males. What kind of government is that? Every government needs a female touch, less you wouldn’t all be so grumbly. I don’t need any more miserable males in my life. I’ve had enough of that, thank you very much, even if you are spirit-demons-whatever-you-are.”One of them snorted in irritation. “Does anyone have the time?” she asked. “The Otherland possesses all time and no time, encompassing and balancing precariously the past, present, future, and the nothingness,” a white plump figure explained.“Well the past, present, and future time for me is 8:00 precisely, or I will wind up with nothingness if I lose my job.” Lydia chuckled at her own joke.The boy’s head was down, pointed at his sluggish feet.“Cheer up, little man. You’re too young to be so unhappy. You’ll have plenty of adult years to have that,” she scruffed his thick blonde hair. He did not lift his head, nor did he smile. “This is where we leave you. Be prepared for the summons for the ceremony to conclude this matter,” the white-figure with pink eyes said to the black-figures. Then they lifted off into the colorful sky. Lydia waved. “Bye white things, it was nice to have met you.” Another step-forward and she was assaulted by a complete change of scenery. If where she’d been had been in the daytime with a glowing sun and a beautiful sunrise, here it was night. No moon. Pitch black. The ground no longer soft and fluffy, but hard. Goosebumps instantly aroused on her skin from the chill. Shadows of blackness, hardly visible, flew in the air, like bats. “What the -?”Lydia turned to where she’d just been and saw blackness for as far as the eye could see. “And to think that for one night, one night, I thought I might actually be able to go without a nightmare,” she grumbled aloud. “Let me guess, they have night vision,” she said to the boy, nearly tripping over him.“They don’t need their eyes to see,” he said quietly. “And they’re not white things. They’re the Light and Dark Elders.” She noticed he was trembling, so she wrapped her arm around him. “It is cold here, isn’t it?” “It’s because we have body-heat. They don’t feel temperatures.”“So they’re cold-hearted, eh?” she tried lightening the mood. “You have no idea,” he whispered. “I’ll protect ya. You just have to remember that when we’re dreaming, nothing bad can really happen to us, no matter how much it may seem real.”“Step up,” she heard a moment too late as she tripped on a step and plunged forward, cracking her chin and scraping her hands on the hard ground. It felt like stone.“On the other hand, you still feel the pain like it’s real in a dream. Ow! Thanks for the advance notice, Dark one. I’m sure you did that on purpose.” And she did hear him lowly chuckle. “We’ve got two new prisoners, both humans. One’s been with us a long time. The other just showed up. They’re to be held until the ceremony trial determines their fate.”Their eyes were the only thing that could be seen in the darkness. She heard the boy whimper, so she searched for his hand. “Don’t be afraid. Nightmares feed off of our fears,” Lydia reassured. They were maneuvered forward and then the black, or dark whatevers were gone, and they were left in silence. Lydia walked around blindly, still holding his hand, tripped on something and caught herself last moment.“Boy, I could really use a flashlight or something.” Suddenly light illuminated the blackness from the flashlight that appeared in her hand. “Cool.”“Huh-how did you do that? Humans don’t have magic.”“Yes! A bed and a blanket. Finally! It’s not magic, silly. In the dream world, if you focus it just enough, you can control certain things, and get your conscious mind to manipulate the sub-conscious mind into providing something that you need or want. Come,” she patted the stone-hard bed. “Lay with me. We’ll cover our heads up with the blanket like a tent and tell stories until we wake up.”The boy began to sob uncontrollably. “You don’t get it! You can’t – guh-go back. Thu- that’s why they put you here, so you can nuh-never go back, like – like me. We’re stuck here for all eternity.”“Oh, you poor, frightened boy. I know our dreams, and especially our nightmares, can feel like an eternity when it’s really no more than a few minutes of passing time. I was really hoping for a full night’s rest, but I can’t have you sitting here, crying, and being so frightened. We can leave here anytime we want.”“Huh-how? We’re locked in a stone cell. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor stone that’s a foot thick.”“Perhaps that is what you see, as that’s your imagination. You know what I see?” She swooped the flashlight around the room. “A completely open area. Freedom. To come and go as we please.”“Are you mad? We’re in a big stone chamber. How can you not see that?”“Watch. Tell me where you think the wall is, and I’ll walk right through it.” She began walking. “A foot in front of you,” he said.She kept walking. “Holy cow, you just walked through the wall. How?”She returned to him. “Because there is no wall. It’s just a trick of the imagination. Now, you just watched me walk through it. You believe that there isn’t really a wall, and we’ll get out of here together, back to the wonder part of dreamland.”He trustingly took her hand, but there came a moment when she heard him cry out, he released her hand, and there was a tearful thud. “What happened?” “I ran into the wall I keep telling you is there,” he said angrily, holding his bleeding nose. She took a part of the blanket and held it to his nose.“Hmm, I wonder if you’re claustrophobic in the real world, which is why your nightmare is being imprisoned by stone walls. That’s something like what my sleep specialist would say. You need to face your fears. It’s the only way to get rid of them. In the meantime, you’ll just have to wait it out, lay down, close your eyes, and wait for the nightmare to pass.”Suddenly, she heard other thuds and cries of pain all around them. “And apparently you’re not the only one with the fear of enclosed spaces,” she chuckled. He grabbed her hand in both of his and said, “You must go back before they do their rounds and find out what you can do.” His beautiful, green eyes glowed brighter in his tears. “Promise you won’t ever come back here.”“Of course I’ll come back. We’re friends now. We can have all the adventures you want.”“Please listen to me!” he pleaded. “I can never leave here, but you – you can go back, but you must do it before they catch you. There’s another tunnel. It is white. It is the only light you’ll see in this realm. Go back to your world. Go to your meeting. Don’t worry about me.”“I’ll come back for you. I promise,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. “Here, perhaps this will make you less afraid.” She presented him with a stuffed brown dog with fluffy ears. He looked at her with awe. “I’ll be back.”She ran through the darkness, following the path she’d taken on the way in. Being blind seemed no longer to phase her as she navigated with her internal-compass. Long after she left, the boy curled up with the first stuffed animal he could ever remember having, and cried. Knowing . . . Once she returned to her world, she wouldn’t remember anything, and if there was ever a chance of him leaving Otherland, it was with the girl who looked like a warrior-princess, who did magic and walked through stone walls, and whose kiss warmed his heart more than anything he’d ever known.CHAPTER 2Something slammed into Lydia’s chest and she saw red. Surrounded, without sight, she flared her arms and fought the things she could not see. “Let go of me. Let go of me. Let go of me!” Suddenly she was without breath, without voice, pinned, paralyzed. Only her head was allowed to scream, but who would hear her?“Don’t even bother coming into work today, because you’re fired, effective immediately.”Fired, fired, fired, the familiar voice echoed. Whose voice?“LET ME GO!” She shot up in bed, hearing the echo of a scream, heart pounding, freezing, but covered in sweat. Her phone began ringing. Her throat was parched. Dizzily, she made her way to the phone. “Hello,” her voice croaked. “I’m not puttin’ my ass on the line for you no more, Lydia. Now my job on the line.”“Cherise?”“You just woke up, didn’t you?”“I don’t even feel like I slept. What … what time is it?” she rubbed her bleary eyes.“Ain’t nothin’ I can do for you now, Lydia. You missed the mandatory meeting, and I was left looking like an a-hole in front of my superior, cuz I couldn’t vouch for your absence.”“Please,” Lydia sobbed. “I’ve been seeing a sleep specialist. It takes time.”“Once a month, I covered for you, but this the fifth time dis month.” Cherise sighed, and said more quietly, “I’m havin’ to fire you, effective immediately, I’m sorry.”“It gets worse before it gets better. How do you think I’m paying for my treatment? I need that insurance.”“I care about you, Lydia. I understand what you going through . . . to an extent. They don’t, and they happen to be my boss. I’ll drop your last paycheck off to ya. We’ll go out to eat or somethin’, my treat. I don’t want this to hurt our friendship, but, I got kids. I can’t afford to lose this job.”“And I can?” Lydia said in exasperation.“I gotta get back. I’ll – uh – I’ll check up on you in a few days.”“Cherise,” Lydia pleaded, but the line was already disconnected. Lydia chucked the phone across the room a second prior to realizing she couldn’t afford to break her phone. Then she scoured her small efficiency for her glasses. Cause God forbid I actually put them in the same place every night, she thought. She was near legally-blind without corrective lenses, which was the biggest reason for why the specialist told her she needed to keep her Cuckoo clock. She didn’t know how she’d come to be that way, near-legally blind, that is, or if she’d been born that way. Just like she could never remember living anywhere else other than this little apartment. Cheap, comfortable, everything literally only a short walk away. Her bedroom was the living room, and the dining room, and then there was a small bathroom attached to the efficiency kitchen. There was a hatchback door on the floor that led to the stairs, which led to the driveway. She essentially lived in the attic, but for as long as she had lived here, no one else had ever occupied the downstairs, with a little help from blared music, stomping footsteps, and toilet-flushing whenever someone else arrived to check out the place. Hee hee. Lydia had always been just a little more than the average paranoid and suspicious. In the 14 months of her life that she could remember, that is. She felt the constant need to watch her back, to always have, within her eyesight, a door, an escape. A lot of her sleep issues had to do with being on hyper-alert. Every creak, thud, noise was magnified. Any sound she wasn’t familiar with placed her on instant alert and got her heart pumping madly, so she’d memorized all the sounds in the house. If someone were to move in below her, she’d never sleep, for she wouldn’t be able to predict their sounds. She’d had sleep issues ever since she could remember. The specialist thought it might have to do with the ‘accident’, and all the rest of the life that she’d had that she couldn’t remember. She’d basically been born in the ICU in the hospital. They told her she’d been comatose for two months, and had arrived with a variety of contusions, bruises, a few broken ribs, and some blunt force trauma to the head, not enough to explain her two-month coma, as her brain hadn’t swelled, surgery hadn’t been required, and she should have wound up with a bad concussion, at best. What she hadn’t arrived with was any memory or identification as to who she was. Her memory had never come back, so eventually she donned the name Lydia Marie Smith. No family or friends had ever come to claim her, despite the pictures all over social media, flyers, and everything else saying, ‘Who am I?’ It’s like she’d never existed prior to 14 months ago, but according to her specialist, that was impossible. She had to have existed. Lydia didn’t even know when her birthday was or how old she was, so had taken a vote on how old she looked, at the time, and 24 had won out. She marked her birthday on the day she woke up in the ICU, so she claimed herself to be 25 now.

I was re-bandaging the bullet graze on the back of my left calf with Mom’s medical supplies when I heard the whistling. If I’d thought previously that me having that formula was keeping me alive, being shot in the leg by the Commanding Officer’s men shot that theory right out of the water. The Commander had, of course, played the good guy, pretending he was upset I’d been shot. He’d tried to convince me it had all been a test and that I had passed. Probably had expected me to go bounding back into his arms, after I managed to escape the secure facility. If torture was part of testing, then I wanted nothing to do with his future plans for me. Some memories should stay buried in the deepest, darkest depths of the forgotten subconscious, and he’d made me relive and re-experience my most traumatic memories, which is why Dr. Samson had to die, and why I had to be the one to kill him. I’d buried the torture and their criminal interrogation techniques in their attempts to get the formula from me for good reason, because it wasn’t something I had wanted to remember or wanted to ever have to live with. Even the knowing that I had gotten my revenge and wiped him off this planet didn’t destroy the feeling memory of his disgusting, clammy, white body taking what didn’t belong to him and what hadn’t belonged to anyone, but me. The Commander, whom I’d believed, at times, to be on my side, had also shown his willingness to do just about anything to get his hands on that formula. The formula I’d developed brought subconscious learning into consciousness, without the use of Mind Enhancement drugs. They wanted it so they could hook up an educational machine to every kid while they were sleeping, and be able to teach them things in their sleep that ordinarily would require the expense of Professors and months’ and years’ worth of grueling education and testing. With this formula, the kid could wake up with eight hours’ worth of learning every day, already implanted in long-term memory. Truly the intelligent design behind Intelligent Design, as they synthesized a new man-made Era in years, instead of natural Eras that could take decades to a century to fully accomplish. The whistling grew louder. I thought my ears were ringing due to the sting in my leg, after applying the antiseptic, until Mrs. Lawson said, “Do you hear that?”“It’s getting louder, fast.”Then there was a noticeable vibration. “Mrs. Lawson, get down!” I yelled. “Cover the baby, and your head.”She covered my head too, reminding me of my mother’s hugs.At the same time as a loud explosion above-ground, the ground we were on and under shook and quaked, rumbled and roared. Dirt fell on top of us. The baby began mewling loudly, but could hardly be heard over all the rest of the thunderous noise. “I think we’re being bombed. We need to crawl toward cover, under the wood, or we’ll be buried alive.”Another thunderous roar and reverberating of the earth. A closer one, much louder, and I heard the cracking of wood.“We need to get as close to the exit as possible, if this place gives.”We continued crawling along the dirt floor, covering our heads and ears. Had my Dad known that this would happen? Was that why he built this housing underground? Would it hold? It had to hold. I didn’t go through all of this for nothing. I had things to do, places to go, people to crush, businesses to ruin, and a world to save.After six explosive, ground wrecking impacts, it stopped. I giggled hysterically, which isn’t a funny giggle at all, felt my body and looked around me to make sure everything was still where it was supposed to be and all of us were still alive. Three posts had been crushed, and the area had caved in where we’d originally been taking cover. “What was that?” Mrs. Lawson shrieked.“Sshh, we need to just stay here and wait. We don’t know what kind of technology they got, if it’s equipped with heat, voice, or living-person sensors,” I whispered.“They have that kind of technology?”“I wouldn’t be surprised if they had the technology to manipulate the weather. That’s why I have to go back. I have to know exactly what we’re up against. The problem with that is they want me dead.”“Why?”“Oh, you know, the modern-day detention for non-compliance and disobedience and not doing as you’re told. They can’t control me, so I’m a liability. I have a formula they need. And, oh yeah, I killed a guy who was working directly for the President.”“You what? You killed - ? Catina Salsbury, you know very well that you’re not supposed to go around killing people. It’s a crime, and it’s evil, and you could go to hell for that.”“Yes, Mommy,” I said, bowing my head in mock humility. “I cannot believe this. Your mother would be rolling around in her grave right now.”“My dad would be rocking it out in his, waving a lit lighter,” I said, hiding my smile. “Doesn’t it matter to you the reason for why I had to do it?”“We all have choices, Catina.”“What if I told you he enjoyed torturing teenage girls?”“Then you tell the police and report him and get him locked up.”“Double standards, much? I’m pretty sure when I found you at your house, you were aiming a gun at me.”“I wasn’t going to shoot and kill you.”“Oh, I didn’t shoot him. I broke his neck,” I said simply.That rendered her speechless. “So if it was the men in black instead of me, you would have let them shoot you?” I asked.“Well, no, I - .” “Exactly, don’t judge me. I know a lot more about the world we’re in now than you. That’s why I’m going to keep you and my adorable baby brother alive.”“What can you do? You’re a child.”“You’d be quite surprised, quite surprised indeedy.”After an hour had passed, and nothing eventful had happened, I decided to leave the Hole and check out the damage. We were alive, and we probably weren’t meant to be, but we were. I climbed the dirt entrance/exit and cautiously lifted the plywood covering. About 150 feet away was a massive something, didn’t look like a bomb, because bombs usually explode with nothing left to them, and this thing was intact. A meteor, perhaps. It had crushed the trees like rock to paper.I climbed completely out of the Hole and stood, prepared to check it out, but then a whiff of smoke caught my attention, and a crackling in the distance. Forest fire, and we were in the middle of the woods. Wood was food for fire, and our Hole was made of wood. It withstood that huge monstrous thing striking down, but it would easily be consumed by fire. “Not good,” I said, returning underground, my mind spinning in overdrive of what next. “We got a forest fire, we’re surrounded by woods and brush, and we’re its meal. We need to cover the entrance, as quickly as possible,” I ordered. Mrs. Lawson got right to work with the shovel and wheelbarrow that had been left in the expansion area. I got another whiff and it was not pretty. “Man, you guys stink,” I said to my poor decaying parents. Then I had an idea, and it was the best idea ever, because it was mine. I’m not heartless. I’m really not. I would have preferred a proper burial for my parents, a funeral, with all their friends, neighbors, and family to wish them farewell. I would have preferred time to grieve and yell and holler about how unfair it all was, and to tell their lifeless corpses all the things that I couldn’t or didn’t tell them in life. But you can’t always get what you want, and now was definitely not the time to be able to have those things.Instead, I took the purple earrings that I had pocketed after removing the little chips that had been implanted in my ears, and put them in my mother’s ears. “I need you to help me, Mrs. Lawson. I need the wheelbarrow. We have to get them out of here before we bury the entrance.”She looked as though she might vomit. We shoved my parents into the wheelbarrow with sickening sounds of limp body parts slamming against metal, and wheeled them toward the entrance.“I’m going to drag them up, but I need you to push them.”“Oh, Catina, are you sure about this?”“Positive. I think they would have preferred being cremated anyway, instead of having maggots eat their brains and live in their eye sockets.”She really almost did throw up, but stopped talking and asking questions. One by one, I dragged their bodies 100 feet away from the Hole toward the bomb or meteor thing, and placed them beneath a weeping willow. I gave my tears and all my losses to that tree. My parents, my childhood home, my forest, my tree fort, all of it to be smuggled under ember and ash. I didn’t have time to dwell as the smoke was growing thick and I could see the leaping flames consuming everything in its path. I ran to the Hole and threw the plywood entrance as far as I could throw it. “We need to hurry,” I said. Mrs. Lawson and I worked double-time, filling the wheelbarrow with dirt, and packing it against the entrance. I thought it was tears blurring my vision, but then Mrs. Lawson began to cough. The place was filling with smoke. “The holes! The air holes. We need to get them covered before we get smoked to death.”Finally we had the entrance buried and the holes covered. We were quite literally buried alive, but quite luckily buried alive with shovels, food, water, and all the supplies we could possibly need. Mrs. Lawson, covered in dirt and sweat, collapsed against the cool dirt, while the place began heating up like an inferno. I brought her water.“How hot do you think it’s going to get down here?”“I don’t know. How hot an underground cave gets when there’s a raging forest fire above ground isn’t something I learned in all my education. Best to be safe than sorry. The Fountain is probably 30 feet away from here or so. We need to keep digging.”“The Fountain?” she questioned.“My and Kay’s pond.”“It’ll flood the place. All your father’s work, years and years. I don’t think this was his intention.”“You got a better idea? We could just sit here and figure out the hard way how hot it’ll get, then hope we live through it, after we’re marshmallows! Now dig!”After digging 15 feet in, Mrs. Lawson stopped, breathing heavily, sweat matting her hair, clothes and body. “A 30 foot tunnel. What if it collapses while we’re in it?”“Good point. It’ll take longer only one of us doing the digging, but if you stay on the outside of the tunnel, and it collapses, you can at least dig me out. We need supplies and they need to be packed into something waterproof. Stuff for the baby, water, food, and I need two things from my sheet sack: all my father’s letters and his book.”I continued digging, feeling like death might not be so bad, while she gathered the supplies and took care of the baby, who couldn’t sleep for longer than 20 minutes and always woke up howling. “Oh, I think both my parents had I-phones. See if you can find one, with a charger.”20 feet in and looking down the long tunnel, I felt for sure there was no way it would hold. I didn’t know anything about underground digging and tunnels, but I did know the more I hollowed out the area, the more weight was on the ground above me. I gathered the plywood that had fallen, turned it sideways, and wedged it in random places in the tunnel, hoping it would help a little.The heat was unbearable. My arms felt like lead weights. I was eating dirt, snorting dirt, and crying dirt. It seemed impossible. I slumped against the wall, wanting to waste the last bit of angry energy on punching things, but when you’re 25 feet lengthwise in the ground, you don’t want to go punching around and throwing your weight into places that could bury you. “I’ll do it,” Mrs. Lawson said. “We’ll trade places.”As reluctant as I was to position her in that death trap, my arms were useless. “Dig only to the point where the dirt becomes moist. Then we’ll know we’re close,” I said. Then the scariest thought of all came to mind. What if I had misjudged the direction of the Fountain, even by just a few degrees? No, pessimism wouldn’t help me. I could navigate to the Fountain blindfolded and backwards. These woods were my home. 45 minutes later, listening to Mrs. Lawson’s grunts, groans, and heavy breathing, she yelled in excitement. “Dirt’s wet. Well, more wet.”“Great. Come back out here in the opening, get some water. We need to make our plans now, just in case. I’m having you go out first with the baby. You have to grip the mud and kick upward with your feet, so it doesn’t drag you down. Both of us will have to dig as quickly as possible once we reach the water to fit our bodies out. We’ll dig only large enough to fit our body through, so that’ll stop the water from completely pouring in.”“No, Catina, I won’t do it that way. I’m heavier than you. You’ll be flushed away like a twig. You go first.”“Ray’s life is most important.”“Your father didn’t do everything he did just to get you killed the first day,” she yelled. “Rope. We’ll use rope around our waists. I know I can hold my own. After all,” she winked at me. “In my younger days I won medals and trophies in swim team. Probably could have made it to the Olympics, but I met Charles’ Dad, and gave it all up.”“I didn’t know that about you, Mrs. Lawson.”“Well, you young people always look at us old people like we weren’t once you, and had all these crazy goals and ambitions, wanting to be something extraordinary. We grow up and learn that the extraordinary are few and far between, and the majority of us aren’t willing to make the necessary sacrifices to do the above and beyond. You’re extraordinary, Catina, just like your father always bragged. He never once, not a day, in all those years, gave up on you,” she said.I’m sure it was meant as a compliment, but guilt crept into my throat for all the years that I had given up on him, on both my parents, and I’d refused to have anything to do with them up until my sister’s graduation from the Health & Home Program. I cleared my throat. “So we’re going to separate after we surface. I’m a target and you being with me makes you a target. Do you know a place you can go temporarily that you can keep yourself secret, and where no one can track you, just in case?”“I do, but I really think you ought to go with me. She’s a good friend of mine from the old days. She’ll take all of us in and won’t speak a word about it to anyone. She’s a widower, lives alone, no children. We’ll be safe.”“No can do. I have to go my own way for a while, get everything figured out, and keep you and Ray alive, because I can’t exactly take care of him. You’re dead, okay? Like the parents are supposed to be. You need a new name, identity, location, everything. You’ve never heard of me before, have no idea who I am, and have never lived in Marathon. Walk until you find a phone you can use, payphone, store, some passer-byers cellphone. Call this lady and have her come get you in a private location. Then you need to become a Mormon, or Amish, or Mennonite, and join some kind of naturalist community with Ray.”“Mormon? But –.”“Please, Mrs. Lawson, just listen. Baby Ray gave me the idea. The naturalist groups will let you join in their community as long as you do what they do. You don’t exactly have to go through an interview process and a background check and you don’t need a license to drive a horse and buggy. They’re naturalists, and survivalists, and they live by a whole different set of rules and protection against the States, understand? That’s where you need to raise Ray. He’s your child and he’s to have the last name of whatever name you choose.”“But what about - ?”“The I-phone and charger is in your pack. Keep it off for no less than three months, because they can be tracked. After three months, turn it on and charge it only in the middle of the night. I will find you.”She nodded her head slowly, understanding, and swallowing the cruel reality down. She’d have plenty of time later to process it all, as would I. “And Mrs. Lawson?”“Jane Bombay,” she said quietly.“I like it. You look like a Jane. Ray Bombay. Not bad at all,” I smiled. “Do not try to contact or locate your son, Charles. I will get word back to you. I promise.”“How will I know if you’re still alive? How long should I wait?”“Just trust me. I’ve been pretty good at staying alive so far. I’ll be going into hiding for a while, getting ready. Like Dad taught me, it takes longer to prepare for the war than it does to fight it. Please just have faith. I know too much now, which means I can either let it kill me or I can do something about it. I’m a Purple and I’ll forever be a Purple. Maybe one day I’ll let you know what that means, as soon as I figure it out myself,” I chuckled. “I don’t think I can have faith right now, Catina. All of this loss and destruction and - .”“Not to be disrespectful or anything, Mrs. Lawson er Bombay, but God doesn’t have anything to do with what is happening in our world right now. Now is the perfect time to believe in something greater than man, because this is man’s destruction. Now dig and be prepared to hold your breath, and swim for your life, the baby’s, and my own,” I said with finality, cinching the last knot of the rope around our waists.

John is in and out of conscious awareness, reality and dreams a line he can’t separate. For all Angie’s life-saving techniques to get him on the right path, he’s back to a life of being unloved and unwanted. He’d spent 30 years longing to have what he had now with his deceased father, and his wife just didn’t understand. Claire understood. After all, it was Claire who was there when his father was sick and dying. Claire that was there when he was getting in one scrape after another, trying to get his father’s attention. Claire that saw how deeply it had wounded him to lose his father without any last words, because of his stubborn refusal to acknowledge his father in death and dying, as his father refused to acknowledge him in life. He kept his office door locked, refused even Claire’s presence, unhooked the phone, and dabbled in the drugs and alcohol that were once his escape from this reality. At one point he heard Claire knocking and yelling through the door. The next he’s seeing her ethereal face floating above him, just her face. “It’s time,” he hears her say, her neck twisted to the right, before he returns to his oblivion. The next time he comes through he is no longer in his office. This wouldn’t have concerned him enough to waking but for the straps on his ankles and wrists imprisoning him to a chair.“What the - ?” His first thought is that he won’t be able to abstain from withdrawals while strapped to a chair, causing exactly that to double him over where he retches on the floor. The room is pitch black, which he notices as soon as the withdrawal passed for the moment. “Hello! Hello! Can anyone hear me?” he yells, or more or less croaks. His mouth is parched. “I’m here, John.”“Claire? Claire, what the hell is going on?”“I’m helping you,” she says, but her voice, though Claire’s, is oddly cold and strange. He cries out when she yanks back his head and he feels a sharp prick in his neck. His withdrawals instantly disappeared. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Claire. You’ve always been my favorite. I should – I should have married you, not her. You’ve always understood. You’ve always been so nice. You’ve always known what I needed.”“Oh, shut up, John,” she snaps. “The only thing you’ve ever cared about are your own needs. Just like your father, you think of no one else’s but your own. Given a second chance at life when you found that girl. Everything your father and I went through so you could have that girl, and you’re throwing it all away. And now, even though you don’t deserve a third chance, you’re being given the gift of your third and final chance, but it’s going to cost you.”“Cost me?”“You’ve been chosen, John. You’ve been chosen by Him.”“Him? None of this is real, is it? How long have I been high? I’m dreaming or hallucinating. The Claire I know doesn’t sound like you. So sweet. So kind. So gentle. So much like my mother.”“ENOUGH!” a low male voice resonates loudly through the room. “I am He, and you have been chosen. I offer you my gift, a very rare and precious gift indeed. I offer you a glimpse into your future for a million dollars that you can certainly spare.”“Who are you? Wha-where are you?”“Behind you, in front of you, surrounding you, and inside you. Are you willing to pay the price for this gift, your third, and your final chance? I have chosen you, because I have seen your future, and it is grim, John, but in giving you the power to hold the future in your hands, you can change it if you’re so willing.”John tries to will his eyes to see in the dark, but all he can see are glimpses of a black silhouette, seeming nowhere and everywhere at once. “There’s no such thing as a man that can tell the future. Impossible.”“I AM HE!” the voice roars. The room shakes and trembles, and suddenly the floor is no longer beneath John’s feet. The floor opens up to a white rectangular light. John’s eyes tear over as he tries to keep them open against the blinding light. His eyes adjust and he finds himself looking at Angie’s downcast head, her beautiful red hair drawn over her face and her shoulders. Her shoulders are shaking. “Angie! What did you do to my wife?!”Harsh laughter echoes throughout the room. “This is not what I did. It’s what you did.” Zooming out, he sees that Angie is sitting at his desk in his office. On the desk before her are his empty liquor bottles and used needles. Suddenly, as though somehow aware that her private moment is being shared, she looks directly at John, her beautiful blue eyes shining with tears, her face profound with devastation. Abruptly all goes black and his feet return to the floor. “NO, no, no! She wasn’t supposed to see. She wasn’t supposed to see. I just needed a few days to get my head straight, that’s all.”“You haven’t been home in two weeks, John.” Claire’s voice. “Oh no! What’s – what’s going to happen now? I’ll go back to the hospital. I’ll get clean again. I can’t lose her. I just can’t! Tell me. Am I going to lose her?”“Are you willing to pay the price?”“Yes, yes, anything. Please, just please tell me I won’t lose her.”“That is in your power and your power alone, John. I can only show you what your future looks like right now, from this moment. You will pick a time in the future, and you will see as long and as far as you can bear to watch.”“All I need are four more years. That’s when contracts can be renegotiated. Then I’ll have all the time to spend with my family, and be the father and the man they need. Show me. I want to see five years from now.”“As you wish.”The room shakes and trembles as it did before. His chair lifts and his feet leave the floor as it did before. John stares into the place where just moments again a bright light illuminated the devastating image of his Angie, but nothing happens. The floor doesn’t open. Nor is there light. He waits, his breathing heavy, two minutes, five minutes.“How come nothing’s happening?”“It is, John. It is happening,” the voice is somber. John hears Claire shriek and begin to cry. “What? What is it, Claire? Do you see something?”“No, John. I don’t see anything. Because five years from now, you don’t exist.”

She was losing blood, too much blood as it spilled out of the wounds on her chest, her stomach, her sides, her legs, her arms. Too many holes, too much blood, too much pain, too much weakness, too little time.All odds were against her, yet she continued to fight the unconsciousness that simply wanted to absorb her in its bleakness, its blackness, its painlessness, with a primal, animalistic intent . . . survival.She left a trail of red on white as she dragged herself through unpacked snow, burying her face in it here and there to quench the severe dryness of her throat.She was dying from a succession of 17 merciless stab wounds from a six inch hunting knife. She would die. It was inevitable. Yet she continued her painstakingly slow crawl toward some kind of life, all the while continuing to hear his agonizing shouts playing over and over and over again in her head like a broken record.“I love you. Oh God, I love you. I love you so god damn much!”****The alarm clock blared, arising Burton to that particular abrupt awakeness that occurs when one’s slumber is suddenly disrupted. He looked at his wife in wonder – that she could continue to sleep completely undisturbed despite the beeping at 75 decibels directly beside her ear. Once leaning over her and swatting the snooze button, his head returned to its indentation in the pillow, but then he was harassed with a new awareness to raw heat of nude parts emanating off of his significant other. Completely unguarded in her sleep, Charisma was a beautiful specimen. It was this moment every morning for the past five years that Burton was in complete awe of the woman he had married.The whole of her 5’8” frame was curled in fetal position, her porcelain pale face unmarked by anything bothersome buried in the long, black, silky hair pulled over her left shoulder. Her lips curved slightly upward in that constant small smile he’d first fallen for, like a woman in love, like a contended child. There hadn’t been any bad dreams since the night before their honeymoon. To watch her so innocent in sleep, it would have looked completely natural to find her thumb between those soft child-like lips. . . . But he’d rather it be his tongue between those lips as despite the vulnerable impression of her child-likedness that made one react with nurture and a fierce need to protect, her aura displayed woman with all her fiery passion and hormone-driving phermones mixed with a delectable combination of maturity, knowledge, and wisdom. She was neither the intelligent, cold, and nerdy prude, nor the impulsive, foolish, bodacious bimbo. Rather she was a mixture of the two, an intelligent bodacious babe that could be spontaneous while maintaining a healthy climate of modesty, humility, and dignity. But she was never cold, by God, cold Charisma was not. She carried warmth from the deepest portion of her soul to the satiny surface of her skin and outward. Her inner warmth warmed his soul where her outer warmth set his body aflame.He admired her. How many times in these past five years had strangers thought they newlyweds?How many eyes had looked upon them with envy? How many pessimists had scoffed, saying it would dull and fade once the new wore off? And how many others had turned to faith in hopes that they may be blessed the same with such a perfect and unburdening love? Had they been blessed? Absolutely. And never would they stop counting their blessings. They’d inspired many and they’d insulted many with their deep and undying love.Despite having grown up in the same small town of Camillus they’d never crossed paths prior to the tragedy that had brought them together. He was non-denominational, and she had been strictly Catholic, making them as diverse as Black and White, though ironically believing in the same God. Six years ago, Charisma was left beaten, broken, and pregnant amidst a religious group and family that couldn’t understand how Charisma could possibly want to keep the greatest reminder of her tragedy. Where Catholics are typically strictly pro-life, they deemed the child in her womb a spawn of one of the devil’s demons that needed to be exorcised rather than aborted or terminated. Like society, like government, morality, rules and regulations, and laws are everchanging in the eyes and hands of the beholder, and the people, once provided poor premises from authority they trust and respect, go along with it as though it had always been the way. When Charisma refused to rid of the child in her womb, they turned her away and shut her out of their world of truth and enlightenment and right. She had been completely closed off from her portion of society and life that she had always known, always loved, always believed in, because she believed that all children were good in the eyes of the Lord, no matter who or what they came from.She had come to Burton’s church a stranger, confused when she could not find the confessional box, a foreigner to a different world. She’d had her back to him when he first gently approached her. Her shoulders were hunched, and she quite resembled the Virgin Mary herself with the cloth that wrapped around her head and body to keep out the chill of a dying winter.“May I help you?” Burton had asked her, carefully moving closer.Her shoulders jumped and straightened. “I’m here to make a confession,” she had said.“Okay,” he had said, not familiar with this approach. Normally people just asked for his help. “You can come into my office if you would like. I can make you some coffee or some tea.”“I don’t drink coffee or tea. It’s a –” “So you’re going to freeze to death in the name of our Father?”And suddenly she giggled, realizing then how ridiculous it all was.“I suppose you’re right.” He could hear the smile on her lips. After long hesitation she turned toward him, “I wouldn’t suppose you have any hot cocoa in that office of yours, would you?” And that’s when Burton had lost his heart to the one woman he would ever love.“Only if you like it overflowing with marshmallows.”She nodded, a shy smile on her lips, and a small struggling rebellious flame in her eyes that processed her potential to go against all she had ever known.“Come on.” He had grabbed her hand, feeling oddly boyish and giddy. “My office is filled with every sweet and fulfilling beverage and morsel a person could ever want. I have a confession to make myself, and it has to do with this unnerving sweet tooth of mine that can never be sated. The children love me because they know I will share all my goodies.”“Well, for having such an avid weakness for sweets, it obviously has not affected your smile any.”“Ah yes, sugar and sweets will rot your teeth. It’s all in the genes dear, all in the genes and body composition. There are those who never touch sweets, yet their teeth are weak and decaying, and then there are those, like myself, who eat sugar all three meals daily as well as a mid-day snack, evening snack, and midnight snack, and have not a problem in that regard.”Burton had seated her comfortably on the small recliner in his office with a steaming cup of cocoa overflowing with bobbing marshmallows. Whether the hot cocoa or the space heater or himself, she came to be warmed and relaxed quickly, and he found something even more beautiful than the phenomenal acoustics of the church resounding in chorus, and that was her laughter echoing all around him, as he made her laugh time and time again with the purely selfish desire to hear her laughter. He made a vow that day after secretly vowing that he would marry this woman, that he would always make her laugh. He found one other glorious thing that night aside from Charisma and love . . . Father Burton Faulkner had found God with the enlightenment of one of his greatest miracles of true love.They talked and they laughed until the birds began to chirp the following morning. Disowned by the parents with whom she’d been staying, Charisma was homeless. That the woman could still laugh after what she’d been through was a miracle in and of itself. From spending three weeks in intensive care progressing from a mere two percent chance of surviving to 65 percent, she was transferred to recovery where she spent another month of her life. It was at her six week stay when they realized she was pregnant. After two months of hospitalization, Charisma had returned home to a whole congregation of Catholics, not to welcome her back, but rather to pressure her into ridding of the child in her womb. And now three months after her brutal victimization that she just barely survived, friends and family alike had cast her out as though she were the criminal and to blame.Burton had welcomed her into his home, into his church, into his family and friends, into his life, and into his heart.Society had then turned on them both, calling it a scandal. She was called a child then at 17 years old and he a pedophile at 28. He’d moved into the scheme of the stereotypical pastor and that’s all they saw him for. His job was jeopardized, his reputation to the people, and he and Charisma alone, once the most respected people in society, had stood up to them all, had taken the blows, . . . and had forgiven. Martha Lampshell had started the food-throwing at the church to get the Pastor off of the podium, but when Martha Lampshell’s house burned down, it was Charisma and Burton that took her into their shared home while supporting her and providing her with all those things needed to get her back on her feet. When they’d gone on their honeymoon, consummating their love for the first time after having lived together for a long and sufferable six months, the church had been desecrated horrendously for their return, and without a word, Burton and Charisma had fixed it up. Not a single person arrived at the hospital when the child was born, and when it was time to baptize the newborn child, the holy water was found to be contaminated with salt. Patiently Burton had locked the doors so that no one could leave and with Charisma at his side, they drained the basin and refilled it with pure holy water.“If this child is to pay for the sins of his father, then may God make the water burn him,” Burton had exclaimed, and everyone had held their breathes, expecting just that. Not only didn’t the child burn, but he came up from that water laughing and gurgling ga, ga, ga, ga which to highly alert ears sounded very much likeGod, God, God, God!It was that day that Burton had given one of his most prominent and remembered speeches. “Mary was called a whore because her child was not conceived in the traditional way of procreation of a man and wife. Everyone turned their eyes away and shut their doors on their faces. Mary gave birth to God’s only son, Jesus Christ. Years later when Jesus was a man and trying to spread the word of God, their were many that betrayed him and turned their backs. They tortured him with their words before they tortured him on the cross, because they were ignorant and close-minded. We are born sinners, but let us not be so ignorant and close-minded that we do not see the truth. God has already given my family his blessing , just like God’s blessing was already bestowed upon Jesus Christ. God’s blessing was enough for the suffering Jesus Christ just as God’s blessing is enough for my family. I quote Jesus’s words, ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do.’He had stormed out of the church that day, carrying the newborn he loved as his, and holding the hand of his gentle wife. Gradually in six months time, the congregation, save a few souls, had given them their belated blessing. And six months after that with Charisma and he just as much in love and a pretty average baby boy, many had come to him to ask, “Father, how can I earn what you have been rewarded with? How can I find what you have found?” Like a mother will tell her children to eat his fruits and vegetables and he will grow big and strong, Burton would tell them to do good things and follow the righteous path and to keep their eyes and minds open to the opportunities that come about.Now five years later, Burton touched her heart-shaped face with profound adoration. He traced the curves of her expressive high-defined cheekbones, her kid nose … and suddenly Charisma abruptly jumped out of bed,startling him.“What is it?”“Baby’s up,” she said, hurriedly covering her nudity with a peach robe.“I don’t hear -” And sure enough there were the little baby goggling sounds barely audible from across the hall. An alarm clock a foot from her ear hadn’t awoken her. Burton’s warm touch hadn’t awoken her. But a sound that could only be heard through intense concentration had woken her immediately. Amazing. She was wide awake now, her full breasts ready to nourish their dependent six month old baby girl; their first and their last addition to the family.“I was having some very detailed, juicy dreams. Wanna hear?” she said to him while pushing her feet into peach slippers. “Yeah, tell me every detail and maybe I can replicate it.”“Maybe later.” Charisma winked at him before scooting out the door. Burton went for a swipe at her rear, but missed. He thought of that rear in the palm of his hands, enveloping his face. Forgive me father for I have sinned, but that’s a hell of a temptation. You enjoyed every minute of making that mold.Charisma scooted into the room closest to her and Burton’s bedroom and patted her son’s rear. “Come on, Bun Bun, time for breakfast.” She moved on to the next room across the hall. “Good morning, baby doll.” The precious babe suckled air, giving a visual of where her mind was at the moment. Charisma quickly lifted her, planting a kiss on her forehead before patting Bun Bun’s bun bun once again, and gliding down the stairs on tiptoes.Charisma popped a nipple in the suckling baby’s mouth and threw some butter on the heating frying pan. One-handed she cracked the eggs on the skillet, laid out strips of bacon on another, and placed some bread in the toaster. She flipped the eggs, the bacon, buttered the toast, laid out two plates and distributed breakfast onto them just as a bedraggled six year old Sonny entered the room followed by his lesser bedraggled adoptive father, both yawning and letting their noses do the walking. Charisma got out the cups and poured the freshly-brewed coffee into two cups and the orange juice in the spider man cup that had a color-changing straw.As though merely a football, Charisma moved the baby to curl into the other arm and latched her on to the remainder of the meal before returning upstairs and grabbing her son’s school clothes and backpack. The baby content and dozing, Charisma hurriedly changed and dressed her, placed another kiss on her forehead, and laid her back down in the bassinet. “Sweet dreams, love,” she sang as she closed the door and moved to her dresser to get her clothes for the day.Sonny met her in the livingroom as she returned downstairs with his clothes and backpack, as well as her husband’s tie and briefcase. “Can I watch cartoons?”“As soon as you put on your clothes.”The dirty dishes soaked in a sink full of hot suds that Burton had filled. He laid his paper down and pulled out a chair for her in front of her already-made up coffee. They held hands across the table as they sipped off of their lives’ fuel and discussed their plans for the day.He stood. She helped him with his tie. He put his shoes on. She made up a fresh mug of coffee. He wrestled with Sonny’s jacket as she tied Sonny’s shoes.“Bye mom, love you,” Sonny said, grasping his father’s hand.“Love you too, sweetheart, have a good day at work.”Burton wrapped his arms around her in a big bear hug. “Bye sweetheart, I love you.”“Love you too, have a good day at school.”Sonny giggled as they kissed. Burton grinned at him. “What? What’s so funny?” “Mom says yer going to school and I’m going to work. Mom’s silly.”“Silly-lookin’,” Burton said, causing Sonny a riot of laughter.“Yeah, we’ll see how silly-lookin’ I am when you crawl into bed tonight.”“Is that a threat or a promise?”“Both.”“Until my guy comes out growling, we’ll see who’s screaming,” Burton said.“What guy? You mean a…a monster!?” Sonny said excited.“Oh yeah, a big hairy scary monster,” Burton said.“Oh wow!”“Not that big. It’s a little monster.” Charisma showed Sonny with two fingers five inches apart. “So small you can bite its head off.”Burton grimaced. “Ouch, dear, very big ouch.”“Come on, Dad, you’re making me late for school.”Little Sonny dragged a reluctant Burton out the door.Charisma waved from the tall window until the Green Taurus was but an ant on a hill, allowing herself that small moment of sadness that they were gone, before getting to work on all the baking she needed to do today for the bake sale. The bake sale’s profits would go to the children’s wing at the hospital, where Charisma had to go after the bake sale, as she’d volunteered to paint the wing’s walls a nice cheery yellow as bright as the sun as were the children’s requests. From there she had the church choir as they were preparing for the Easter Mass Concert. She would see her husband on and off all day. He wouldn’t be there at the bake sale as he had his own prepping to do for Easter Sunday, but he would be there to help paint the children’s wing, and then despite supposedly being locked up in his office, Charisma would find him peaking around the corner of the door at her as she sang in the choir.At 3:00, as Charisma rushed around to clean up the eight rooms and two bathrooms in their Victorian-style home, Sonny came running through the white picket fence in the front yard, full of the energy only a child can have. “Mom! Mom!” he cried. “I been lookin’ out the window all day and seein’ the sun and I want to go swimming. I want to go swimming.”She laughed. “Well then what are you waiting for? Go get your trunks.”He scurried up the stairs as Charisma hurriedly changed herself and Jewel for an afternoon of swimming. Charisma was slowly making her way down the ladder, baby Jewel in her arms, when Sonny did a running cannon ball, spraying cold water to all those places not yet used to its cold.Charisma laughed. “Don’t splash, Sonny, it’s getting on your sister.”“Put her in bed. Let’s play me and you, mom, then we can splash all we want.”“It’s not her nap-time. She’s been sleeping all day. For once she’s finally wide awake.”He dragged on her arm. “Hold me, hold me, hold me.”“I can’t hold you, sweetheart. I’m holding your sister.”“Throw me, Mommy. Pick me up and throw me in the water like you do sometimes.”“Not now, honey. I have your sister.”He squinted his eyes at her, furrowed his eyebrows, tightened his lips. Charisma held her breathe.“I don’t want a sister. Take her back.”Charisma laughed. “I can’t just take her back, silly. And when she gets older, you’ll like her a lot more because you’ll have someone to play with.”“Can she swim like me, Mommy?” He frantically did the doggy-paddle.“Nope, that’s why I have to hold her.”“What if you dropped her?”“She would fall in the water.”“Would she drown?”“Until I got her back out of the water.”“Would she die? Would it kill her?”Charisma gasped. “Sonny, where do you come up with these things? I won’t be dropping her which means no, she won’t drown, nor will she die.”He seemed to contemplate this for a moment and then grudgingly concluded,“Good, cause then I won’t have a sister no more.”Jewel giggled in delight, throwing her little hands at the water.“We can play with the beach ball. Do you want to do that?”“Yeah!” Sonny exclaimed excitedly. Back and forth they hit the ball until he tired of that game. Then they played bumper boats with their floaties. They were having so much fun that time passed quickly and Burton arrived out on the deck, home from his day’s work with a dinner not yet even started.Burton admired his family unaware before diving into the deep blue waters to the screams of the rest. He surfaced, gliding his hand from Charisma’s calf, up her thigh, touching her most privately and then plopping a wet, dripping kiss on the baby’s mouth, and a longer, hotter, lingering, passionate one to his wife’s lips already aquiver from the small pleasure he’d aroused in her. Going back under he chased Sonny’s paddling feet to his son’s shrill delight.“You got this while I go in and start dinner?” Charisma asked, but their fun play was answer enough. With a silent smile she boarded the deck, laying Jewel on a towel while wrapping her own around her waist. She caught her husband’s admiring eyes and his glint of disapproval when the towel covered all her curvy delicacies. He was a wonderful man. Truly a wonderful, wonderful man.He was a full-blooded and full-bodied Italian with dark thick hair at the moment wet and plastered to his head, a few strands curling over his forehead. He wasn’t huge but his frame was large, big-boned, and somewhat fleshy around his torso and chest area. He had a round head with pink cheeks and navy blue oval eyes. His lips were a natural dark pink, something Charisma envied him for, as well as his long thick lashes. He was covered in black hair in the front, but fortunately not too absurdly in the back. He was a good-looking man. Not gorgeous, not pretty, but good-looking, handsome in his suit and tie, sexy in his navy blue swimming trunks.Burton had a way about him that made him the perfect Pastor. People wanted to talk to him. People wanted to confide in him, despite the intimidation of their being judged because of his cloth. He was mild-tempered and soft-spoken. He did all the smiling with his intense eyes and the crow’s feet surrounding them. He never yelled. He never had to. His power, his authority, his control came from within. He was the type of man you never wanted to disappoint because although a word wouldn’t be said on his part, he would have that look, and that look would cause the most merciless to squirm in their pants with a conscience newly-developed. But when you pleased him, boys, girls, adults, the elderly alike would feel that pride the child feels when they’ve made their father proud.And Charisma loved him. She loved him for the helping hand he’d so willingly provided six years ago. She loved him for the stand he’d taken against the congregation for her. She loved him for the acceptance of a child that wasn’t his. She loved him for everything that he was and everything that he wasn’t. He’d taken her in. He’d supported her while she completed college. He was there for her every step of the way, no matter how thick. He’d won her heart, married her, adopted her son, bought them this house, and finally given her his child, the baby girl. If he’d accomplished all this in only six years, Charisma couldn’t imagine the blessings 20 years from now would bring.While the meatloaf and potatoes baked, Charisma called them from their play. Together they set the table. Charisma poured their wine as Burton filled the sink with suds to let the dirty dishes soak. Jewel was placed in her highchair, clapping her hands in delight. Sonny took his seat on the booster in between his mother and father. They all held hands as Sonny spoke their dinner prayer.Burton mmmed and aaahed over the meatloaf. Sonny declared how much he hated meatloaf. Charisma lectured him not to use the word hate. Jewel scarfed down her applesauce and pureed green beans. Charisma critiqued her meal saying she should have used more of this and less of that. Burton assured her it was perfect. Once the subtleties were out of the way they spoke of their day, Sonny overpowering any sort of conversation with his wild tales and exhilarating excitement.Burton cleared the plates and put them in the sink as Charisma set her son up at his desk so that he could do his homework. Only upon its completion could he have dessert, providing the motivation to hurry up and get it done. Jewel went down for more sleep. Burton filled their wine glasses one more time as they now had the opportunity to speak one on one in quiet voices.He gripped her hand and lovingly caressed it. “Darling, I must confess. I have been cheating on you with my eyes. There is this woman who sings in the church choir and her angelic beauty and voice stand out from the rest of the choir. She wears the mandated maroon robe but every time I look at her, I find myself wondering what she is wearing beneath the robe and I picture her not wearing anything at all.”“Burton, to have such thoughts in church, under God of all places.”“I know. I cannot help it. She is just too beautiful.”Charisma flushed with his compliment. “Well then I, too, must confess that I see this man peering at me as I sing, looking so handsome in his starched suit and tie and my thoughts tend to wander in the want of taking hold of that tie in my hand and wrapping it around my wrist and pulling him to the nearest pew and–”“Daddy!” Sonny called.“Hold that thought, dear. Our son needs higher intelligence, hence his calling for his daddy rather than his mommy.”“He just wants to ask you how to spell pig.”Charisma went through the dinner mess as Burton helped Sonny with his homework. Once completed Burton came in with Sonny at his side. “Can I have my dessert now?”Charisma scooped both of them a brownie with vanilla icecream and then woke Jewel to take care of the evening feeding and a quick bath. Sonny was next in the tub, and then they all sat down together for their nighttime reading. With Burton’s deep resonant voice, it’s power and ability to change characters, he was the perfect story-teller.At 8:00 they tucked Sonny into bed and Burton gave the night-time prayer. Love you’s were exchanged and the door was shut very very slowly.Suddenly Charisma bolted down the stairs, Burton not too far behind her. She threw the shower on as he rapidly undressed her, then ridding of his own clothes he joined her in the warm spray. Each taking turns with the soap they lathered it over one another’s bodies and alternated positions to rinse. He brushed his teeth as she washed her hair and then he washed his hair as she brushed her teeth. She wrapped the towel around her hair and took off naked toward the stairs as he followed dangerously close snapping a towel at her rear.“Quiet, you’ll wake the - ”He tackled her as she squealed in a face-plant on the big bed. His hands hurriedly roamed her backside as she flipped herself over. Their lips clashed hotly as they prepped one another, their hands moving over one another. Charisma arched her hips as he slid smoothly inside her. They moaned and murmured, never tiring of the dance they’d begun five years ago and continued to do on a three to four days a week basis. He lifted on his knees and took both her cheeks in the palms of his hands and slid her over and around him as he grinded against her, awaiting his favorite climax-causing moment of her gasping, “I’m gonna – Ahhhhhh.” Settled into and on one another, they kissed until their contended end. Gathering her up in his arms, Burton rolled off of her and they fell to sleep with her head at his shoulder, her hand splayed on his chest, their legs entwined, his arms wrapped around her and holding her hand.Life was good.